RUBIO IS REALLY A DEMOCRAT

Sen. Mario Rubio’s speech last night confused me. He ticked off item after item where the government came to his and his family’s rescue then declared government is not the answer to our social problems.  He described his family and his neighbors—the people he represents a Senator—as being typical middle class immigrants or descendants of immigrants. All of this should have put him solidly in the liberal camp. If that is the case, “Why is he a Republican?” It just does not make sense.

It took a little while to figure out and answer. In the early 1950’s a college student named Fidel Castro was rabble rousing over the social injustices in Cuba. I can remember as early as 1954 seeing “vive Castro” crudely painted on white washed walls in Santiago de Cuba in the Oriente Province. At the time, I had no idea who Castro was. Cuba was operating under a dictator Fulgencio Batista. Havana was a typical top down Latino type economy supported by conservatives in the United States government coupled with gambling, manufacturing, and sugarcane interests. The Cuban government was decidedly right wing and authoritarian as were most banana republic governments in Central and South America.  The cry in the American Congress was that if you opposed those governments you were pure evil, you were communist—Castro was communist, and had to be beaten. What was unique was that he was not beaten, he won; making Cuba different from every other county “south of the boarder”.

Even today, American citizens will recognize our conservative government’s pronouncements from those times, “Batista is a bastard but he is our bastard”.  There were rich people and poor people in Cuba but as Castro gained ground, many of the  working class people, a small but significant group, feared communism and impending economic collapse due to Castro’s declarations that he would close all U.S. owned casinos, nationalize Cuban business, and take over sugar plantations. They left Cuba in droves and immigrated those few miles to Florida, the Rubio family among them. In the U.S., the anti communist, Castro hating, conservative party co-opted the hate “Castro immigrants” by welcoming them warmly. What was important was that the conservative party hated Castro but in reality the conservative or Republican Party was the driving force supporting Batista thus preventing Cuba from forming a democratic government, which would have been left leaning; to them, anything left of radial conservatism is communism. This was the same fear Conservatives had for any of the so-called nationalization movements in South and Central America.  

Cuban immigrants are Latino but are not like the Mexican or those from other countries. The Cubans immigrated because of fear of Castro, while most Latinos immigrate looking for work. The Cubans walked into the embrace of the Republican Party while most others were undocumented workers “here to take your jobs”. The liberals welcomed them. My conclusion is that Marco Rubio, and his neighbors, are truly liberal at heart and should be join other Latinos and become Democrats.

Rubio’s speech sounded stilted and amateurish because he was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. He embraced our government programs while awkwardly trying to condemn them. Marco, if you want to identify with others in the Latino community, disapprove of the way Conservatives treated Cuba after their revolution. They supported a Batista dictatorship, planned an Eisenhower’s Bay of Pigs invasion, demanded a severe economic boycott, passed amendments punishing Cuba for nationalization of U.S. owned businesses, imposing travel restricts to prevent you and your parents from visiting Cuba, among a long list of other things they did trying to punish Castro. Conservatives did not help Cuba; they hurt Cuba; they hurt you.